Follow my blog as I navigate my way around the world of social media in public relations

This week we had Zack Sandor-Kerr spoke to the class about various social media tools used for connection. He covered Twitter “promoted tweets”, “promoted accounts” and “promoted trends”. This post discusses their potential value to a public relations program.

Twitter promoted-accounts and promoted-tweets

The following You Tube video create by Twitter, does a great job at explaining how the Twitter Promoted products work.

Twitter promoted-trends

Every minute of every day, Twitter hosts viral conversations that reflect some of the hottest topics of the moment. These trends are featured prominently next to a user’s timeline. By promoting a trend you can capture people’s attention and generate conversations about a specific topic or issue while targeting a broad audience, both in the Twitter-verse and beyond.

The power of Twitter

In my research, I came across this video which made me think of Twitter in vastly different light. For those like me who had trouble understanding the power of Twitter, this video does a great job at explaining in an interesting an creative way, just how powerful of a tool it is in our society and all over the world.

The costFor “promoted accounts” and “promoted trends”, you only pay when people follow your account or engage with your tweet. You can set the limits on how much you want to spend per day and per follower. However, there’s a catch (isn’t there always a catch?). According to an article in venturebeat.com, these products require advertisers to spend a minimum of $15K over three months.

“Promoted trends” on the other hand have a much higher cost associated. The daily cost is $120K per day for advertisers, which is up significantly from the $25K to $30K it charged in April 2010.

So, if the revenue brought in or potential revenue offsets the costs of Twitter promoted products than there’s definitely value in incorporating this into your public relations program.

The benefits of Twitter promoted products to a public relation campaign

Twitter’s promoted products can be of value to a public relations program in the following ways:

Even if you don’t generate a huge return on investment right away, the potential is definitely there. For one, “promoted accounts” can help to increase your follower base – which can mean more customers down the road, or expand your network to followers that you may have not been able to reach on your own.

“Promoted trends” can enable a company or business drive more awareness around your brand and its products and is an effective way of capturing people’s attention. It can also help to reach entirely new audiences (hence, why it costs the big bucks).

“Promoted accounts” can speed up the process of gaining followers, which sometimes may take months. It is also allows you to target specific followers that would be interested in your business, and “promoted tweets” enable you to get your content out in front of more people.

New followers are not only potential new consumers, but they have the power to re-tweet and amplify your reach.

You can take things one step further and review the accounts of your new followers, identify them as your target audience, and target specific tweets to those audiences. It’s also a useful tools for monitoring buzz, reputation, opinions, trends and what’s being said about your organization.

This week we were asked to trial a QR code reader or explore a mobile visual service tool like Google Goggles and a the location based application Foursquare. I chose to explore Google Goggles because it offers unique advantages over application like Foursquare and QR codes, such as allowing users to scan any images and granting the user the control of what they want to view and what they don’t.

I tried scanning various items, including an Ikea catalogue, a car advertisement and wine label. Some worked better than others. I believe this is due to the fact that the technology is relatively new and most companies have not made their advertising fully compatible. Of all three searches performed, the car ad returned the best results.The application was able to detect the Acura logo, link to the Acura website and bring up a list of dealerships in my area. I was however, disappointed that the resulting images were not of the model that the ad was promoting. Actually, not one of the images that were returned were of the model in question. I think the company should think of better positioning their ads to work with emerging technologies like Goggles in order not to miss future potentially lucrative promotional opportunities.

Below are three possible uses for Goggles for public relations:

1) A municipalities and towns can enable their landmarks to interact with Goggles to increase tourism. A landmark scanned with Goggles can redirect the user to their tourism website to drive visitors to particular events or locations. An example of how this could be effective was if the CN tower was to use Goggles to redirected users the 360 Walk to increase participation and drive tourism.

2) Another good use for Goggles would be to change and monitor perceptions of your company or brand. Buick recently put out a series of Goggle-enabled ads to shift peoples’ perceptions of Buick from a big, boxy car for baby-boomers, to a company that is progressive and forward thinking.

3) Lastly, Goggles can be used to monitor a PR campaigns overall effectiveness. For example, an image gallery or web link can be set up for your campaign and Goggles can be used to measure views and visits, and monitor conversations on social media sites. It can also provide useful insight on how customers interact with your brand.

I took this course in the hopes of better preparing myself for my new role as a Web Content Administrator, and to familiarize myself with the various social media tools and principles in order to be able to bring fresh ideas to the workplace.

Having only have used social media for my own personal use (mainly Facebook for keeping in touch with friends) and switching employers from one that was and still is very resistant social media to one that is open and willing to embrace social media, I am now faced with the daunting task of acting as the organization’s web and social media point person. This includes keeping the organization’s existing social media platforms up to date and making recommendations for new opportunities.

This info graphic illustrates how popular various social media tools have become, and it only touches on a few.

I have labelled this task “daunting” is because I find that I am slightly overwhelmed by the plethora of tools available to us. It seems like before I can get a chance to get familiar with one tool, there’s a new one emerging, with new features, seems to be better and faster, and more utilized. For example, before I even began using my Instagram account Pinterest emerged. and it seemed to be taking off more quickly. In the end I got overwhelmed and decided not to bother with either. How does one differentiate between the various platforms and which one to use for what purpose? How does one decide whether to use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest? Do you choose one over the other? Or is it the more platforms you are on the better?

I hope that as the course goes on and as we explore the various tools available that this becomes clearer to me. Does anyone else feel the same way as I do? Perhaps the more seasoned vets can offer some useful insight.